Chopin's piano music is a perfect example of the Romantic ideal for expressing the poetic feelings and emotions through the medium of sound. Chopin was a fitting example of the Romantic artist - he was lonely, aloof and withdrawn - a talented but tragic figure, dying as he did at a relatively young age of thirty-nine. He was the founder of the 19th-century school of cantabile playing ('in the singing style' - emphasis on held melody lines). Chopin's legacy is found in the development of playing techniques to support the all-important melody line, including such typical features as:
the delicacy of long lyrical melodic lines with graceful ornamentation
spreading arpeggios simple, broken chord accompaniments with subtle pedalling effects
discrete use of romantic tempo rubato in the music
passages of rapid articulation and virtuosic display
a range of touch and tone quality and a control of dynamics of volume.
A distinguished English amateur thus records his impressions of Chopin's style of pianoforte-playing compared with those of other masters. "His technical characteristics may be broadly indicated as negation of bravura, absolute perfection of fingerplay, and of the legatissimo touch, on which no other pianist has ever so entirely leant, to the exclusion of that high relief and point which the modern German school, after the examples of Liszt and Thalberg, has so effectively developed. It is in these feature that we must recognize that Grundverschiedenheit (fundamental difference) which according to Felix Mendelssohn distinguished Chopin's playing from that of these masters, and in no less degree from the example and teaching of Moscheles... Imagine a delicate man of extreme refinement of mien and manner, sitting at the piano and playing with no sway of the body and scarcely any movement of the arms, depending entirely upon his narrow feminine hands and slender fingers. The wide arpeggios in the left hand, maintained in a continuous stream of tone by the strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper pedal, formed a harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic cantabile. His delicate pianissimo, the ever-changing modifications of tone and time (tempo rubato) were of indescribable effect. Even in energetic passages he scarcely ever exceeded an ordinary mezzoforte. His playing as a whole was unique in its kind, and no traditions of it can remain, for there is no school of Chopin the pianist, for the obvious reason that he could never be regarded as a public player, and his best pupils were nearly all amateurs."
A distinguished English amateur thus records his impressions of Chopin's style of pianoforte-playing compared with those of other masters. "His technical characteristics may be broadly indicated as negation of bravura, absolute perfection of fingerplay, and of the legatissimo touch, on which no other pianist has ever so entirely leant, to the exclusion of that high relief and point which the modern German school, after the examples of Liszt and Thalberg, has so effectively developed. It is in these feature that we must recognize that Grundverschiedenheit (fundamental difference) which according to Felix Mendelssohn distinguished Chopin's playing from that of these masters, and in no less degree from the example and teaching of Moscheles... Imagine a delicate man of extreme refinement of mien and manner, sitting at the piano and playing with no sway of the body and scarcely any movement of the arms, depending entirely upon his narrow feminine hands and slender fingers. The wide arpeggios in the left hand, maintained in a continuous stream of tone by the strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper pedal, formed a harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic cantabile. His delicate pianissimo, the ever-changing modifications of tone and time (tempo rubato) were of indescribable effect. Even in energetic passages he scarcely ever exceeded an ordinary mezzoforte. His playing as a whole was unique in its kind, and no traditions of it can remain, for there is no school of Chopin the pianist, for the obvious reason that he could never be regarded as a public player, and his best pupils were nearly all amateurs."